


The Ghost of You

by trix_lyesmith



Category: Loki - Fandom, Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Comics), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Brother-Brother Relationship, Dream Sequence, Dysfunctional Family, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Family Loss, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Grief, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Loss, Mother-Son Relationship, Nightmare, Sibling Rivalry, Thor the dark world spoilers, Thor: The Dark World, thor the dark world gap filler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-01 14:32:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trix_lyesmith/pseuds/trix_lyesmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor's POV.<br/>What happened after TDW (Spoilers)</p>
<p>Thor is having trouble sleeping after all the events of TDW, due in particular to the losses he suffered and, being the heart-warming soul that he is, feels some responsibility and guilt toward them...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghost of You

**Author's Note:**

> I have all these Dark World feels, I apologise. 
> 
> I also have a thing for resolving issues through extended dream-sequences. I may have picked this up from Whedon. *Shakes fist.* 
> 
> Plus the film left all these gaps to fill, so what else are we s’posed to do, eh?! Takes place directly after the film, please don’t read if you have yet to watch it and are avoiding spoilers.

The soft ebb and flow of mournful sobbing drifted toward him on the night-time breeze; a grave herald through the darkness that called out to him and weakened his heart.

He could hear that heartbreaking drawing of shallow breath, the sound hitching as it caught in someone’s chest, followed by the slow, grief-filled exhalation.

Feeble, cautious steps through the palace drew his body automatically toward the sounds, and against his consent he found himself wandering the corridors, until he came upon the source of the commotion at a half open door - one particular door which he had not approached for nigh on two years now. 

His eyes roved over the gilded surface, the ornate ‘L’ fashioned in bronze above the handle, the emeralds studded into the swirling patterns, and against everything his brain was screaming at him, he reached out one trembling hand to push it open.

As he peered around the frame, dragged himself into the open doorway, he began to distinguish the familiar furniture in the faint light:- the sturdy oak bed, the elaborate rugs, the dresser, and the silvered mirror that sat atop it, an object which had always captured his fascination as smoke often roiled beneath its glittering surface.

And then he caught a glimpse of two figures that shook his very soul to pieces.

They were dressed in once-rich royal garments, which hung from them now tattered and bloodstained; the pair made a twisted frieze of grief and serenity, yet lay strewn upon the floor like broken and discarded toys.  
A mother and son parted by death, only to be swiftly reunited by it.

He stood there in the doorway, arms hanging limply beside him, feeling as though an intruder disturbing something sacred, uncertain whether to move forward or to take retreating steps away from the heartbreaking tableau. His limbs had numbed, a tingling sensation overcame his lips and face, his hands continued to tremble, and his eyes clouded with tears.

She looked up at him over the lifeless body spread out upon the ground before her, desperately clutching at the arms, the shoulders, trying to bring the body closer to her, to cradle him against her, even perhaps will him back to life. One moment she rested her cheek against his forehead with fleeting little sobs, next she grasped his grey and lifeless hand and wept in anguish. But the look in her eyes as she turned them upon Thor was not just that of distress, it was….accusation.

He stared back at her numbly, her face so familiar to him, and yet… something about her was not quite right. He struggled to recollect her true face in his mind’s eye and noted that her eyes here were in fact not that of his mother’s, and yet, strangely, it was a not an altogether jarring sight. He knew those eyes still, ones which stared back at him so desperately now; tear-stained, puffy and rubbed red – blue orbs glistening in a broiling sea of torment.  
Loki’s.

He could recollect those eyes so vividly from so many memories – Loki’s tears drying upon his chubby little infant face, sucking on his thumb and looking up ardently at his elder brother as he tried to cheer him with puppets; melancholic sapphires, when once his heart had been broken as a schoolboy and Thor had had to journey them both to Vanaheim on covert errands to distract his brother’s mind; tired and full of aching anger when they had fought upon the Bifrost for the throne and their parents’ love; scarlet-rimmed and desperate when he had visited Loki in his cell shortly after their mother had been taken from them...

“Y-you k-killed him...” Frigga, clutching her son’s body so fiercely, forced the words out through gritted teeth, grief-stricken. A single tear tracked down one cheek, “m-my little b-boy...”  
Thor recalled how hard she had sobbed and sobbed against his chest when he had returned that day from the broken bridge without his brother. How she had looked to his father with such pain and fury... just as she looked at him now.  
“Mother. I...I...”  
“My BOY!” She wailed, collapsing forward dramatically, burying her face against Loki’s chest. “How _could_ you...how could you not protect him?” She stroked Loki’s face tenderly, “...my clever boy... you—took—him—away!”  
Thor’s eyes lingered upon his brother’s lifeless face. It stared up blankly into nothingness, twisted in an ‘o’ of shock, surprise. Finality.

Then suddenly, it was he who crouched over the broken body; once again he could feel the weight of Loki beneath him, feel his fingers clutching at his own forearm for salvation, feel his own hand pressing into the wound upon his brother’s gaping chest. Loki was living still, breathing, looking up into his face, panic-stricken, and whispering his “sorrys”...

The landscape around them had altered drastically and in the blink of an eye; the vast and desolate plains of Svartalfheim blanketed themselves out around him.  
His heart leapt for all but an instant.  
This was his chance. Somehow he had gone back, returned to a point where it was still possible to save his brother.  
He could still save him.

Those words echoed through his mind as his mother knelt down opposite him, fixing him with a look of pure, cold malice, drawing the sharp, gleaming blade out of her own chest, and raising it high above Loki’s...  
“This is all—your— _fault_.”

*

The bellowing cry that escaped his lungs would’ve been enough to wake the dead, had they not already been visiting him in his sleep.

He swung himself to the edge of the bed, and rested his aching head upon his hands with a heavy sigh.  
It was the second night since he had defeated Malekith and subsequently returned from Midgard, battle-damaged and one good man short. Returning home had been harder than he could’ve imagined. His short-lived moments of rest were plagued by ghosts, nightmares and guilt.

He had only one photograph that he knew of to hand. Rubbing one side of his face wearily with his left hand, he used his right to open the bedside drawer and fumbled around for the elusive photograph.

It was outdated only by a thousand years or so. Loki looked younger but it was no stretch of the imagination to picture them as though it had been only yesterday. The pair were smiling, regal, enchanting. It had, of course, been taken back when his brother had been blissfully unaware of his inheritance - or lack thereof; when his sibling had not been broken by betrayals of the heart.  
A happier time.

Frigga read casually in the sunlight, and Loki sat at her feet casting runes. It was peaceful…serene.

“I’m sorry.” Thor muttered into the darkness. “Please forgive me.”  
Though to which of them he was saying it to most he could not tell.

 

“I heard you stir, my boy.” The voice, disembodied, was hushed and eerily calm.  
Thor looked up to see his father standing illuminated in the doorway, and gave a fleeting smile of recognition.  
The only family he had remaining.

“Too many ghosts have followed me home father.” He sighed, clutching the photograph tighter.  
Odin moved into the room on swift legs and sat down awkwardly beside him.  
He caught sight of the picture in Thor’s grasp and after a moments silence he whispered, “their closeness of nature was something I could rarely understand, yet was frequently cheered by. It seemed the most natural thing in the universe. I always thought…..he would be alright, as long as she was guiding him.” His brow creased. Never before had Thor seen such a sombre look upon the Allfather’s face.  
Thor sighed, “I cannot sleep here. I feel as though they never left us, and yet...”  
The Allfather gave a brief smile that was entirely devoid of joy, “Svartalfheim has changed you, Thor. You have grown desolate.”  
“It is not Svartalfheim that has changed me father.” There was a beat and then, “they were the best of both of us. He was...hmmph...”  
Odin’s head snapped up, as though jerked by a string. He stared a long while at his son.  
“You are mourning - for him? And yet he hurt you so badly not one year ago...”  
Confused, Thor placed his photograph aside. “What you speak is true. And yet I cannot seem to hold Loki entirely accountable for his actions.”  
“You blame me?”  
“I blame myself.”  
There was a heavy pause.  
“...I see.”  
“ _And_ you.”  
The Allfather grunted, “You should not punish yourself so. I can shoulder the blame alone...and I can take the burden of grief enough for us both.”  
Thor studied his father a moment, unsure whether to continue.  
“I see you mourn for her. But for Loki…? I am not certain father. It would do you well to bury your demons and forgive him a few of his trespasses...”  
“You look at him as one looks upon a martyr. Do not be a fool Thor. Loki did not sacrifice himself for you-“  
“-You are WRONG.”  
Thor stood, angered that the man who sat so close to him could be so vacant at a time such as this. So devoid of emotion, so level-headed. Perhaps this was a necessary sacrifice for the ruler of Asgard. If so, Thor was not entirely sure he could detach himself from sentiment.  
“You did not know him as I knew him…” he spoke, with a measured calm.  
Odin shifted uneasily, still perched upon the edge of the bed, looking smaller and older now than he ever had before.  
“And that was always your problem father. You never took the time to understand him.”  
There was a melancholy silence as the two regarded each other, Thor with an exposed anguish, and Odin with a look almost of surprise, and…perhaps respect.

“Did you ever convince yourself?”  
“Of what?”  
“That he was happy. That he did not yearn to understand why he was treated so differently. That you could continue spinning him untruths?”  
Odin appeared caught off-guard by the weight of the questions, “Those I cannot give answer to.”  
With a deep and weary sigh he rose unsteadily and after patting Thor hard on the shoulder, he inched his way out of the room.

“Except one.”  
Thor looked up once again at the silhouette of his father standing in the doorway, who had now half-turned toward his son with a wistful look.  
“Before all of this. Loki. He _was_ happy. When he was accepted by you.”

The Allfather nodded toward the photograph that lay now upon the bed. Thor glanced at it a moment, and remembered the serenity he had found within it.  
Their eyes met with understanding, and they continued to regard each other until Thor finally gave a curt nod, and Odin turned away. 

“I have something further to discuss… about my future in Asgard…”  
Odin did not turn back, he simply gestured with one hand, “There will be time for talk come the morrow my son. For now, simply rest.”

Thor turned himself to his bed and thoughts of sleep.  
He did not hear the whisper of a ‘thank you’ in the hallway, or feel the gentle embrace of an enchantment slip across him, lulling him into a sound and dream-free sleep.


End file.
